Trinidad: $100 changeover stress seen as factor in bank employee’s death

(Trinidad Guardian) Col­leagues of Sco­tia­bank’s Ch­agua­nas branch se­nior em­ploy­ee, Sil­vine Coop­er, 41, who col­lapsed on the job on Thurs­day and sub­se­quent­ly died from a sus­pect­ed heart at­tack, are blam­ing her death on the stress con­nect­ed to the new $100 poly­mer bill.

The re­sults of a post mortem which may have been con­duct­ed on Coop­er were not yet re­vealed.

It is al­so not known if the 41-year-old had any pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tion which may have con­tributed to her ear­ly demise.

But speak­ing with the Guardian Me­dia, a col­league, who wished for strict anonymi­ty, de­scribed these past few days as “hell” for bank em­ploy­ees and is con­vinced Coop­er’s death was due to stress.

The col­league said, “Deal­ing with thou­sands of cus­tomers with loads of cash is very stress­ful and is tak­ing a toll on their health and no one in au­thor­i­ty thought of us bank work­ers and what we have to go through in this short tran­si­tion period”.

“It’s very stress­ful for us with the work­load and long hours. Look what hap­pened to this gem of an em­ploy­ee ‘Sil­vy’ who al­ways had a smile and tried her best to help the cus­tomers…the stress was too much for her…this could hap­pen to any­one of us…this has left us trau­ma­tised,” the col­league said.

Coop­er, a wife and moth­er, was at­tend­ing to cus­tomers when she col­lapsed at the bank at about 2.45 pm.

Un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts were made to re­vive her. She was sub­se­quent­ly tak­en by an am­bu­lance to a pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion where she was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.

Coop­er’s col­leagues de­scribed her as a ded­i­cat­ed work­er and one who was hum­ble and very well-loved.

The Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School com­mu­ni­ty, in a Face­book post, said they are deeply sad­dened by the sud­den pass­ing of “one of our sis­ters, Sil­vine Coop­er; class of 1995/1997. We share in this time of grief and pray for peace, com­fort and strength for her fam­i­ly and friends dur­ing this time.”

Sco­tia­bank’s Ch­agua­nas branch re­mained closed on Fri­day and cus­tomers were re­ferred to the Cunu­pia and Cou­va branch­es to have their busi­ness trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed.

Coop­er’s col­leagues we were up to Fri­day yet to re­ceive pro­fes­sion­al coun­selling fol­low­ing her death.